Will You Remember Me Forever?
by Sakiiru
Summary: [KenKao] To dream, she said, is to remember even the things that cannot be. [oneshot]


**. n_o_tes .** I'd never actually tried to truly find the depth in Kenshin and Kaoru's relationship—they were together, in my mind, only vaguely for the concept of second chances. However, after watching _Reflections_ again, I decided I would give them both a chance at another kind of love—however brief, however difficult...the only kind that brings the most healing of miracles.

**. d_i_sclaimer .** No element of Rurouni Kenshin belongs to me, though you can all have them when I'm done with my fun.

**. w_a_rnings .** Character death, angst, contemplation—Shortened to a novella with much patience, which may make it slightly irregular. Forgive me for my obvious lack of concision. Due to circumstances, the characters will also most likely be...out of character.

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**. w _i _l l . y _o _u . r _e _m e m b e r . m _e_ . f _o _r e v e r ? .**

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_star-light, star-bright  
first star I see tonight  
I wish I may, I wish I might  
have this wish I wish  
tonight_

>> 

She found him the moment he was dying.

On the steps of the rusted wooden bridge, he had receded; forsaken in the merciful shadows of solitude, within the ashes from which he was born. Her eyes of gentle aquamarine had caught the wretched cross-shaped scar, splashed callously across a gentle face: fragments of a venomous poison, of the bitterness of atonement, of the sacrifice that follows the sparse hope of faith.

He was never complete, not in those eyes: she had seen, without hesitation, the humanity of his soul without searching, the pariah of an innocence that had never belonged. The cross of redemption; the wound embittered by years of pain and suffering, wonder that seemed not to belong there at all.

Underneath the painted evening, she watched his gaze out into the horizon; watched as he stirred the tranquility of summer twilight with thoughts of torment. Strands of ebony—that image of haunting seclusion—consumes her, wafts into the soul of her own child-like innocence.

Even then, at that moment—seeing such evocative soliloquy drowning in amethyst—she wished only to touch a piece of that suffering; to trade it for a happiness that seemed not to belong to her any longer.

And yet, at the same time, she drew her hand away.

"Are you all right?" It was a question of mere simplicity, one without hidden complexities or intimations. She dares herself to walk closer to him, to keep herself from bringing that agonized soul into her hands, to kneel before that vibrant and unconscious mahogany. He looked up in elusive recognition.

She was a stranger. He did not know her; she was the very essence of happiness that he had sacrificed, so many years behind.

He is startled at her touch; its warmth so exquisite, so pure, it far surpassed such a feeling he had imagined once in his dreams, of mere hopes. Such dreams were no longer in existence; he had let them fall from his hands, shatter into the chasm of his memory long ago; replacing them only with haunting nightmares that seemed to punish him each time night descended.

It was the wretchedness of his sins—the malevolence of his existence—that had lead to such consequences. And he knew he had deserved it. He knew he had justified each one—could only fall back weakly into its shameful embrace. Let it catch him; let it consume him once again.

There was a time once when summer brought happiness: He had asked once for an angel; one with feathered wings to rescue such a tattered soul from dying. He had held the sword in his hands, and he knew at once that he had lost. He wept for the soul he possessed no longer, for the heart that had died before it had lived for him.

She asked him once more: "Would you like me to help you?" She was wary of the weapon in his hands, the promise of death that it held—that in moments, he could cut her agile thread of Life, that his skills were far superior to her own. But she slid closer. She held his face in her hands, his weary eyes gazing upon hers. Gentle aquamarine quiets the embryonic memories dancing within amethyst. There is a long moment of silence, the cadence of her touch drawing his breath into his throat.

He turns his head away in shame. Her hand is holding empty air.

>>

"Why won't he speak to me?" Her voice is desperate, lilted in an anxiety she could not name as she pleads with the doctor the next day.

"He suffers, Kaoru-san." Megumi's voice is laden with sorrow. "He is not at all like our other patients. He is sane, but he is suffering. He forces himself to forget...and his memories disappear faster than he intends for it to." She shakes her head. "But the pain is still present. The horrors are still there, will always be there. There are too many things in his life he does not wish to remember."

Kaoru's azure eyes widen again, darkening in grief. Something stirs in her mind, her solitary memory of him: so torn and fragile, yet he allows it to devour him, without hesitation, without remorse. The remnants of a broken heart.

"He was a murderer," Megumi says, forlornly. "He never wanted it. He despised it, killing people, no matter how much he believed it for the betterment of others." Kaoru stood in trembling horror. "It was taking from him the last of his life...and he was dying, in the end. He couldn't do it anymore. He did not belong in this time, this...peace."

"How can I help him?" The words are abrupt, anxious. Kaoru is frantic.

Megumi cannot answer, breaths shallow as she buries her face in her hands. Kaoru hears her aches, her sobs. "He'll forget you," she replies. "His mind cannot register clearly. He forgets faces, his own thoughts, his own _name_ at times. Eventually, he will die...from despair, or forgetting how to perform physical necessities. Breathing, eating...simply being _alive_. We have tried every medication on him, but to no avail."

"But...he remembers _you_, doesn't he?" Her voice is hopeful, albeit trembling with doubt. "I'm sure he recalls _some_ things?"

She shakes her head wryly. "As if. I'm simply the strange lady who forces pills in his mouth every morning." Megumi rummages through her files in a vanilla folder. "I thank you for your consideration, but...it is hopeless. He recalls very few, and even that knowledge is failing." She bites her lip. "It's best you not involve yourself. In the end, he forgets...everyone...who has ever tried to help him to live again."

>>

The taps on the door are nearly inaudible, though the door itself is slightly ajar; "Can I come in?" A frightened whisper; silence burdened heavily on the other side. Kaoru sighs as she gently prods it open, the door creaking tremulously on rusted hinges.

There is not much light in the room—the morning incandescence cast its subtle radiance on the whitewashed walls—resulting in a faint, hauntingly painful, familiar luminosity. There are no pictures on the legions of empty white space, no memories, no paintings. A fleeting sense of emptiness—of something so beautiful, so whole, that the room could not contain it—lingers outside the walls, but cannot filter in through the open glass. _A room full of yearning._

He is sitting by the window, staring blankly ahead. She is startled that the sword is gone from his hands—somehow, he seems so achingly empty, so incomplete, without it by his side. There is a lingering wistfulness, vacantly filling the empty space with all that was him; all that could not be forgotten: the frightening miscellany of shattered memories. He does not respond to her entrance, nor does he seem to be aware of her presence at all.

"Um, Megumi-san let me visit you, after I saw you on grounds yesterday," Kaoru says, carefully. "I know you probably don't remember her—or me, for that matter—but...I mean, well, I brought you some lunch." She weakly holds out a small basket, a smile plastered lamely on her face. "I didn't poison it or anything, so it's safe to eat...I think."

His gaze never moves from the window. He seems not to have heard her.

With a sigh, she drops the bag at the foot of the bed. "I'm sorry for entering without your permission. I should be leaving now." She turns towards the door, leaving the lunch at the bed and making a gesture to step outside. He still does not turn around. "I...hope you get well soon." The words linger on her tongue. She knows it is a lie; the purity of her essence convolutes with such false hopes, with the entirety of her conscience. He would never heal. Eternity would take from him a life of empty memories, a life of bitter solitude. _And yet..._ Kaoru swallows as she opens the door.

She stops at once as she hears the distant murmur.

"I—I'm sorry?" Kaoru turns around in surprise. "Did you...say something?" The voice had been quiet, nearly inaudible—the softest whisper that could be heard above the screaming roar of sound.

A long pause, and then, "_Don't leave_." He is reluctant to say this, slowly moving his gaze towards Kaoru, her wide azure eyes blinking as they catch hold of sorrowed amethyst. He says nothing else, but touches the scar on his cheek, pleading without words for her understanding. A smile graces her lips, and she steps towards him, the uncertainty that she had possessed moments ago.

She is still a stranger. He is taken aback as she sits beside him, not daring his hands to approach her ethereal skin, the evocative grace of her very essence—such a contrast to the artificial beauty this world had tried to capture. She tilts her head in innocent question. He forces himself to smile, but quickly averts his gaze—she is distant, unattainable; so precious in her entity, he would only taint her with bloodstained hands. There is a sense of guilt for the first time; a terrified loneliness, the torment of nothingness, the yearnings for something in which he could never give.

She opens the brown paper bag and offers him a small sweet roll, which he takes, trembling. Her eyes watch him intently as he cups it in his palm, but does not bring it to his lips. "I made it for you," she says, although this fails to have much relevance to her offer. "I hope you like it."

He takes a bite, threatening to devour the entire roll. He struggles to arrange a smile of his face as he swallows, her eyes beaming, his stomach protesting in convulsion. He hastily shakes his head when she offers another, polite smile still frozen in place. Ironically, the sweet roll seemed to be particularly lacking in sweetness—it was, in fact, utterly tasteless—and he could confess that she was in desperate need of culinary training.

But she has touched him.

He smiles, genuinely, at her kindness, as she drops the extra rolls into her basket. "I'm Kamiya Kaoru, by the way," she says. "Himura-kun, I think your name is. I'm very pleased to meet you." She descends into a bow.

"Kenshin," he hears himself reply, dazedly. His voice is one that had been deprived of use for some time. "That...that is my name." He does not recognize the words; dormant within him for so long, he had nearly forgotten. Something stirs within him as he holds his face in his hands—and yet he did not understand the words he spoke, the name which was not his own. He gazes outside again; the splendor of summer consuming the sky.

He dissolves into its merciless touch, letting it take him: like eternity, like his nightmares, like the ageless interim where his memories should have filled.

>>

She is everywhere. And yet it seems she is nowhere at all.

He dreamed of her that night.

"I want to help him. Please tell me how. I can keep him company, and maybe he'll remember. Please...I...he is in so much pain." Pleading hesitation. "Tell me what I can do."

"I cannot. I'm sorry, I truly am. He is a man of gentle character, one who cannot forgive himself for his own sins. He never deserved any of this. I wish I had an answer for you. But, Kaoru-san..." Megumi is sorrowful. "It doesn't matter. You know that... He will forget who you are by sunrise."

"I know," she said quietly. She swallows and closes her eyes. "I know."

When she enters the room again, he is staring blankly at the mirror.

"Good morning," she hears herself say, the faux lilt in her voice caught bitterly on her tongue. He stares monotonously at the cracked mirror, the reflection of his face oddly distorted through the visible fissure in the glass. He does not answer. His eyes are gazing directly through the mirror, through the reflection of his scar, through the walls and the building, outside to another realm where only his eyes could see. Where she could not be there with him.

"I came to visit you again, to see how you're doing," she says.

Amethyst orbs meekly follow the trail of her voice. Her lips seem to speak with no words, no sound. Slowly, he feels his voice stirring, his spirit alive again, something in the cage of his chest fluttering like the wings of a thousand angels; and he smiles, though he cannot fathom the reason why. The girl at the doorway bites her lip as she walks closer; so fragile and delicate, like winter spun glass. _Winter-spun glass_...

"Who are you?" he asks.

She shatters.

>>

"The stars are beautiful tonight." Kaoru is silent, lost in thought, the glittering stars but mere dust in the sky. Megumi shakes her head. "Hey, you know what they say?" Kaoru blinks. The doctor smiles, stirring her cup of coffee with her straw.

"What do you mean; that stars can grant wishes if you wish hard enough?" The voice is weary; tiresome of fantasies that would never bless even the child who wished the hardest, that spun lies, and nothing more—of one who had sacrificed infinity, for a moment that did not last.

"They say eternity lasts as long as the stars."

"Really." A half-forced smile.

Megumi murmurs faintly, to herself. "But, you know...is it not possible that even the stars are weary of shining sometimes?"

Kaoru sets her coffee down on the table as Megumi stands to her feet. She has no answer.

There is a world of blankness. He wanders blindly, reaching out, tracing steps on the phantoms cast upon the floor.

There are illusions—phantasmagorias of withering butterflies and outstretched lines, curving and dancing upon the emptiness of the place. They weave—a gossamer-like web about the corners of a round room. Paths that lead to nowhere: a sky trapped within spilling water, wind seeping through cracks and paint, reaching for nothing at all.

They taunt him. The stars never seemed so unending, nor the silence so fleeting.

He falls. The voice is gone, but the lullaby still lingers. _The stars never seemed so unending..._

_>>_

He never remembered her name.

Each day, she arrived at his room with the same smile, those familiar eyes of gentle blue. "My name is Kaoru," she says. "How are you doing today?"

"Kaoru," he repeats. She looks utterly bewildered at this as she sits with him on the mattress again, the rusted springs crying out in protest. He repeats it in his head: _Kaoru, Kaoru, Kaoru._ She smiles politely.

"So, how have you been doing?" she questions. It became weeks before she genuinely elicited replies from him, but each time he had spoken, she devoted herself to reminiscing every word. She was gentle with his hesitancy, and touched his hands reassuringly: to let him know that it was perfectly all right to be who he was, that he was a person in her eyes. He became real in a world of impalpable happiness; became much more than a soul past salvation, became instead both a child and a human being. She touched his lips when he forced a smile, a sad one gracing her own. _You needn't pretend in front of me._

He follows the movement of her lips, the wonder of her eyes. "Kaoru," he murmurs again, faintly. Her hand reaches out to touch his, the tenderness of her fingers brushing succinctly against his calloused palms. She smiles, face laced in pink as she slides closer. His eyes widen in surprise as she extracts a tiny glass jar from the folds of her sleeve.

The glass reflects the brilliant iridescence of the window, gently splattering the light on his face. Kaoru beams as she holds it closer to him, and suddenly, he can see: underneath the leaves rests a small creature, humming and moving ever so slightly. There is wonder in both their eyes. "It's a firefly," she says gently. "At night, it will watch over your dreams. You won't be so alone anymore." She takes his hand and presses the warm glass on his palm.

There is a long silence. "Beautiful," he nearly breathes, the small jar in his fingers bathed in a faint afterglow. She smiles. No words are needed.

She has already shown him...everything.

>>

She watches him as he sleeps.

Underneath the flickering moonlight, eyes closed, the quiet rhythm of his breathing all that cages the room, she follows. His expression is tranquil, like the summer sky when she had seen him, he colors of dappled gold and crimson lingering in the face; for one moment, divest of torment and sorrow. And yet...she leans closer, her breath on his skin, as a spasm of pain and torment fleetingly passes across his face.

_He has nightmares._

On the splintered surface of his dresser, the iridescence of the firefly's light glimmers in the dark. It darts about the jar, crashing into the walls, its quiet evening song silenced by the glass. She touches his face, draws her hand away as soon as he stirs. All the memories she could not share tore through her own innocence, leaving a bleeding trace of itself in her heart. Her chin rests on the bed sheets, his soft breath on her lips...and in this moment, she never wants to let him go.

_For everything that could not be..._

In the darkness of the room, curled inside the extra blanket hanging at the edge of his bed, she finally allows herself to weep.

"Do you know when he will die, Megumi-san?" Her voice is no longer frantic; simply riddled in sadness.

"No, I do not." The doctor wipes her hands on a towel, her grim expression placating. "I cannot be sure. But his blood is such a fragile state that if it goes into shock, he will die. His condition is worsening. I cannot foretell his fate now."

"What?" Kaoru's voice is strangled now. "He's really going to...he's really—dying?"

Megumi smiles sadly. "We are human. We cannot perform miracles." She wipes her face wearily. "I've never seen him so happy, though," she says quietly. "I've never seen him the way he is when he sees _you_."

"I—pardon me?"

The doctor sighs and sits resignedly next to Kaoru. She watches, astounded, as Megumi lifts her chin to the ceiling, emerald eyes glinting remorsefully in the flickering fluorescence. "And to think..." her laugh is tainted with hopelessness, "...that once, he was so _ready_ to die..."

>>

When she steps into his room the next day, he looks up and smiles.

"Good morning," she pants. "Sorry I'm late—there was some trouble getting here, and—" She stops as she realizes the jar is in his hands, the firefly encompassed in leaves. He holds it close to his chest, and offers her a sad, serene smile, as she stands in vague perplexity. He steps forward, wrapping her in his arms as she reaches out to finger the jar. In a moment, she feels the warmth of his touch, the drumming cadence of his heart against hers, inhaling his scent of laundry and vanilla, his face pressed against her hair.

"_Thank you_," he murmurs. She blinks in surprise, at his yearning to hold onto her, to catch hold of the last shard of life he could before he was gone. Her hands slide over his back and gather all the shattered fragments of his heart into her embrace, whispering unsaid words on the despairing memories that haunted him so.

_Thank-you, for loving a man of so many mistakes, in such a time as this..._

And there is the night where they touch for the first time, where she sings the evening lullaby for his smile, where the warmth of each other's embrace is ethereal in such wholeness and entity, underneath the summer twilight. There is the moment where she takes a shard of his pain, his suffering, and tosses it to the stars; where she needs not whisper to him, _it's all-right_, _to make mistakes sometimes_.

And there is the moment where neither wants nor needs, but she places herself into his hands and gives everything she has to his taking. Caught inside the thread of eternity, there is the single moment, where neither knows how to let go.

The faint luminescence of the firefly glows on the dresser; she is wrapped in his arms, his heart against her ear. She takes his hand and brushes it against her face, placing her lips on his palm, and he smiles. The cross on his face did not fade with time, but had become beautiful with something new—the traces of memories that still had yet to fade, the ephemeral hopes of new ones. Her ebony hair smells of jasmine and rice; so naive and so heartrending, but is the innocence that he had yearned for in such a long, long time.

She turns to him, the pale moonlight on her skin, smiling and pointing at the velvet sky. "Look," she whispers; he nods, though he sees nothing. She tells him of the world; of the places she could never see, of the places that would never hold her—the free spirit of a silken indigo butterfly in a glass cage. "I want to go there, someday," she says, contemplatively. "I wonder if there is a place, a wonderful place, of no return...will you remember me, then, when I leave, Kenshin?"

There is no answer. Kenshin tilts his head at her with questioning eyes. _A wonderful place, of no return._

She shakes her head and smiles nonetheless. "It's all right," she assures him. "You needn't remember _everything_." But there is the feeling of utter anguish now, as surrealism lifts for reality, for a child who was not ready to see it. "I...I don't want you to try too hard." It is a long moment before she realizes that her eyes are damp with tears.

He slides his arm around her, pulling her close. There are the voiceless words of an _I-love-you_, of a miracle that would never happen, of a wish that would never be requited. There is the painfulness, the agony, of knowing there are dreams that even the stars could not grant, that eternity could never hold.

There are the muffled sounds of stifled chokes and sobs in his shoulder. Kaoru weeps. "I know," she breathes. "I know..." The tears are streaming down her face, staining her skin in a tinge of pink. She cannot tell him: how much she will love him when he is gone, how much she will miss him when he stays by her side.

"I'll remember you forever," he says, faintly.

She can say nothing, just cries into his arms as the moon blanches in the sky. Sheknows it will only last until morning.

>>

The fireflies are absent that night.

In the summer twilight, he places the glass jar at the window. The sparse light inside becomes hesitant—duller, flickering—into a void where there is nothing.

He sleeps by the window. There are no stars.

>>

"My name is Kamiya Kaoru." Her eyes flicker for a moment, hesitant. "How...how are you today?" The leaves inside the jar had far past withered, the sticks decaying, the small firefly's song wearily silenced in the glass. Kenshin is on the bed, gazing at it still, fixed in wonder at the bioluminescence that lay dying in this room. He says nothing as Kaoru enters, but weakly lifts his head to acknowledge her presence.

She cannot remember the first time he collapsed. It is a strange moment: the surrounding air seems to stretch, expand, and close in upon them. Kaoru shrieks in surprise, gasping as the jar falls from his hands. It thumps on the carpet, rolling towards the dresser. He is silent, mouth agape, hand still shaking, eyes glazed in a stunned silence, trembling visibly.

"Kenshin? What's wrong? What are you doing? Kenshin!"

He reaches out and grabs her hand, voice strangled, lips moving with no sound passing. There are her desperate screams for the doctor, her breath fraught with corporeal distress, her anxious grasp of his hand, her silent and desperate prayers for mercy. His breath becomes labored; each precious stream of air more difficult for him to reach for as it passes through his lips. Suffocating. Something whirs in his brain, pulling back into a milling roar of nameless screeches, closing in on something that had lain dormant within him for so long. Instigating breathless gasps and heaving weight of shallow breathing—the sound of dying.

_Something he has forgotten...something he is missing...something he should have remembered..._

He slides limply across the bed sheets, staining its bright blue in a blackened crimson, coughing violently with blood splattering from his throat. He could taste its lingering, sickeningly sweet and bitter taste; the same that had haunted him for much too long. The thoughts rush through his head as his mind blanks, the roars back with sound, pulls back in agony. _Something, something—something, anything—anything at all—_He can hear the time, can feel the ticks pulsating through his veins.

"Kenshin, hold on—don't die, please don't die—I'll get help—" She is begging now, gripping his hand and screaming incessantly for the doctor as he slowly regains consciousness, the black ebbing into color, color evanescing into black. She knows not for whom she is mourning any longer.

She stays with him; she is with him always, even as his days are gradually fading.

She was there, still.

She had always, always been there.

_But I can't be there for you forever._

"Kaoru," he says, slowly; there is the familiar stirring of a faceless image in his mind.

She is desperate; her thoughts spin as she avidly shakes her head. "Don't try to remember now—" She holds his wrist, beats her fists upon his heart. Stifling sobs and gentle whimpers, smiling through tears, praying he would not forget.

Praying he would not remember.

There is the pain, there is the agony, there is the hatred directed towards no one at all; in his eyes, she was not the same as she was yesterday. In his eyes, she was made like new; in his eyes, she was everything and nothing at the same time.

He could not love what he did not remember; could not remember what it was to forget.

There is the hauntingly saccharine suffering—one of such deep devotion, of whispers and wishes, the silent agony of letting go—that blesses those who love another, and could ask for nothing more. She holds the place where his neck meets his shoulder, her face against his, the breath on his lips no longer his own.

His face relaxes into a pained smile. "I...love you, you know," he whispers, voice faltering. There was a time where he was afraid to listen to his own voice, to see with another a piece of himself that he himself had never discovered—something so negligible, so fulfilling, that he had never realized he had been missing anything at all...and yet, she had stepped into his self-ordained hell with promises of a heaven he had never before seen. His words are rasping now; weak with pain, strengthened only by the heart he had forgotten he still possessed.

She is pleading, collapsing on his chest with raking sobs; tears streaming down her face and splattering onto his skin, heart shattering in utter sorrow at the serene smile that graces his lips. He touches her face as she lets it brush away the bitter, salty liquid; drops disappearing as they fall upon her lap.

"I'll remember you forever," he repeats gently, with that same painful, tranquil smile.

He closes his eyes as she presses her lips on his fingers. She attempts at a smile; laden with the arduous burden of eternity—the eternity that never lasted long enough.

Nothing ever lasted forever.

He kisses her fingers, entwined in his. Megumi's distant, incoherent yells are drowned in silence, the darkness enveloped in something far colder, the artificial air substituted by something it could never heal, could never replace. She bears a heart, of a soul deep within herself, of something so becoming that it disappeared the instant she touched it.

He never reached out: Never pleaded, never wanted, never yearned for, never asked.

And still there is question. Lingering in the music of silence, slipping beneath the cracks on the whitewashed walls.

She is the only one who hears.

She is the only one who ever tried. To listen to the words unsaid, to love what was broken, to heal all that could not become. To forgive him where he fell, to redeem him when his soul was far past redemption, to salvage the soul and heart from a murderer who had already lost it all.

To love him, without asking to be loved in return.

She holds his hand in hers; he murmurs words of apology as she weeps. "I'm here." She smiles, cries, silently, hopefully, hopelessly. "I'm here now...so don't you forget it, all right?" He touches her face, eyes echoing in remorseful apology, as she brushes her face against his open palm. Her voice shudders. There are the tears of shame, of yearning, of knowing of nothing but the emptiness where she knew he should have filled. Of the negligible selfishness that life could not satisfy, for her. For one last time: to trade her happiness for his pain.

The flickering bioluminescence from the small firefly at her feet became nothing. A twisted artifice. A mere fleeting, ephemeral happiness.

"So, please..." her voice begins to falter as his breath begins to fade. "Please...would you be here, with me...?" The pain aches, but the suffering becomes a mere illusion as her voice begins to slip away. She holds him close to her, his slight breathing in her neck, his pain in her hands, her suffering so much greater, so much emptier, so much more useless. And yet, she fails to let go.

"Forever..." he murmurs, quietly. "As much as I can." The blood is dry and bitter on his lips. An acidity he had never tasted before: the taste of tears, the taste of rain. Something that had always been there, had polluted a conscience with sanctity; a soul so torn by forgiveness, the mercy of sacrifice that left the deepest scar in his heart.

She falls weakly into his limp arms, his embrace tied in the painful cords of sorrow, his breathing labored, the absence of her smile tearing painfully at his thoughts: _You were not there when she needed you._ He closes his eyes. For all those times she had appeared at his door, even knowing he'd not the vaguest idea who she was. For all those times she sat by him, laughed with him, cried for him. For all those times he had wondered, for all those times he had wanted, for all those times he had allowed to slip away.

For all those times she had needed him. For all those times that she had wanted him: not for what she wanted him to be, but for who he was, for who he never could be.

_There is a place, a wonderful place, of no return...will you remember me forever, when I leave, Kenshin?_

He closes his eyes, before he departs. "I'll remember you forever," he murmurs. "As much...as...I—..."

>>

There is a place where he wanders. A place of illusion, of dreams: Where the earth has no end, where the sun has no place, where the clouds spin silk webs in the sky.

There is nothing defined. There are doors that disappear into the blackness as he reaches for them, smiles that belong to no-one, laughter that seems to surround the place where he stands. There are tears that are blinded by rivers, bloodstained secrets in falling snow, fountains from stone that hold out empty basins in sparse hopes for something to fill it; something beautiful, something made like new.

There is a place where he wanders; a place of no-return, of no looking back, of blindly fumbling to reach ahead.

There are stars in the sky that fade with the summer days. The monochrome of artificial city lights replace their splendor, filling voids of black with scarlet and gold, illuminating empty city streets with false, promising radiance. When the glass stars all have shattered, they can be so easily substituted.

_But their remains will always be made anew._

_>>_

_**I love you, goodbye  
I love you, goodbye...**_

**. _e_nd .** The relationship is, in truth, utterly fantasy-like: it is far different from love, or hatred, or something so simple, so convoluted. I confess I am not fluent at one-shots at all—but, perhaps someone may have felt something from this that I had not. I would much appreciate your thoughts.


End file.
